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Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

By Scott Sumner | Jun 7 2025
For 35 years, I taught economics at the college level. When teaching the theory of supply and demand, I would explain how a temporary shortage of goods would lead to higher prices in the short run. The resulting excess profits would draw new firms into the industry, eventually bringing prices back down to their long ...

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On Models

By Jon Murphy | Jun 6 2025

Models are indispensable.  Reality is insanely complex.  Mapping every possible interaction would be computationally impossible and utterly useless for understanding the world.  Instead, we flatten things down to key causal variables and use them to help us make predictions and decisions.   But models come in different shapes and sizes.  Which model is useful depends on .. MORE

Featured Comment

In social contract a la Buchanan, a people might unanimously consent to a constitution which may have many unlibertarian features even illiberal features (such as zero immigration or zero trade). What is there to bar..

Mactoul, June 2

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Politics and Economics

Borrow Billions for Babies?

By Scott Sumner | Jun 11, 2025 | 0

[Given the recent American trend of political alliteration, I was thinking of entitling this Build Back Better By Borrowing Billions for Big Beautiful Baby Bonds.] The administration has proposed giving newborn babies (whose parents have Social Security numbers) a savings account containing $1,000, which must be saved at least until the child reached the age .. MORE

Economic Education

EconLog Price Theory: Cash Transfers

By Bryan Cutsinger | Jun 11, 2025 | 0

We’re bringing back price theory with our series on Price Theory problems with Professor Bryan Cutsinger. You can see all of Cutsinger’s problems and solutions by subscribing to his EconLog RSS feed. Share your proposed solutions in the Comments. Professor Cutsinger will be present in the comments for the next couple of weeks, and we’ll post his .. MORE

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Prime Mammals and the Limit of Limits

By Kevin Corcoran | Jun 11, 2025 | 3

Recently, co-blogger David Henderson offered some ponderings about the limits of self-ownership. He argued that the government shouldn’t put limits on the self-ownership of adults of sound mind, but such limits could appropriately be placed on children and adults of unsound mind. That raised the issue of how we set about determining when a child .. MORE

Monetary Policy

Thoughts for Your Penny

By David Henderson | Jun 10, 2025 | 11

I’m glad that co-blogger Scott Sumner took on one of the fears about ending the production of pennies. His post made me realize that I had neglected to post on my article on the demise of the penny that I published at Hoover in March. The article is “Thoughts for Your Penny?“, Defining Ideas, March .. MORE

International Trade

Contradictions in “Our National Resources”

By Pierre Lemieux | Jun 10, 2025 | 15

Assume for the sake of the argument that the run-of-the-mill nationalist’s expression “our national resources” is meaningful. These resources—physical resources, capital, talents, expertise, etc.—constitute a sort of “public good” belonging to, and to be consumed collectively by, the nation’s members, if not by “the Nation” herself. Consider a first contradiction. Nationalists are usually mercantilist: they .. MORE

International Trade

A Terrible Track Record on Trade Negotiations

By Jon Murphy | Jun 10, 2025 | 2

One of the myriad of justifications given for Trump’s love of tariffs is that they are actually a negotiating tool to get the rest of the world to be more fair to American firms.  American firms supposedly face high trade and non-trade barriers and these tariffs are to show that “we mean business” and force .. MORE

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Book Club

Regulation

Housing Restrictions Hit Harder Than Tariffs 8

When I started to write this article, I was ready to blame Paul Krugman for not discussing this far more important economic restriction. Then I did some research. Research is most useful when it changes your mind, and my research did change my mind. It turns out that Krugman has been very good at laying .. MORE

Economics of Health Care

My Weekly Reading for June 8, 2025 2

Is the Supreme Court Really That Divided? The Facts Say No. by Billy Binion, Reason, June 5, 2025. Excerpt: The gist is simple. That issue focused “on what appears to many to be an existential threat to democracy,” the magazine wrote, which is “the far-right shift of the Supreme Court, and the conservative movement’s plans .. MORE

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Fewer Rules, Better People: Where Lam Falls Short 11

I had many good things to say about Barry Lam’s book Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion. However, no book is flawless, and no argument leaves no room for pushback. There are several places where I think the analysis in the book falls short, or at least misses out on important insights. While Lam’s .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Life After College

By Arnold Kling

Can the four-year degree be saved? Not for most learners, I would argue. Once less expensive alternative pathways become clearer and surer, a full-on degree will seem impractical… But why does the degree have to be the only product that colleges sell? And why can’t the American Dream be achieved by other college products, other .. MORE

Henry George’s Protection or Free Trade: A Critical Review

By Charles L. Hooper

Henry George published his spirited defense of free trade, Protection or Free Trade, in 1886. In this classic, George paid special attention to how protectionism affected the working class. Except for the slightly dated writing style and examples from a century ago, Protection or Free Trade could have been written yesterday. With the election of .. MORE

An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey: Part III

By Tyler Cowen

Polities and Economics In the first article of this series, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer’s epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I then turned to Homer’s treatment of comparative political regimes in the second article. In this final essay, I return briefly to The Odyssey’s polities, and then consider the lessons the heroic tale .. MORE

Joy in Economics… and Tolstoy?

By Richard Gunderman

Frontispiece, Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. This article was inspired by a recent Virtual Reading Group on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, led by Richard Gunderman. Learn more about our Virtual Reading Groups at the Online Library of Liberty. To what field of study would a thoughtful person look to find more joy in life? For .. MORE